Tag Archives: press reform

Downing Street has admitted that Nick Clegg has a veto over David Cameron’s plan to establish a royal charter on press regulation because he is president of the body that would have to approve the measure.

The prime minister is due to publish his plan for the royal charter, though No 10 admitted it cannot come into force without the agreement of the deputy prime minister who is lord president of the council. He is the cabinet minister who leads on the privy council that would establish the royal charter.

Cameron’s proposal is due to be published on Friday afternoon, and comes after all-party talks on implementing the Leveson report into press regulation collapsed on Thursday. The prime minister is to table amendments to the crime and courts bill in the commons on Monday that would allow exemplary costs and damages to be imposed on media organisations that do not sign up to a press regulation body established by the royal charter.

David Cameron was facing a potentially damaging Commons defeat over the Leveson report after he startled his Liberal Democrat coalition partners by unilaterally announcing that he was curtailing months of talks on press regulation and would put his proposals to a vote in the Commons on Monday. The Lib Dems and Labour, after frantic consultations, announced they would table alternative amendments to introduce an element of statute and ensure the new press regulatory body was free from industry interference – two issues that the majority of newspaper proprietors have stoutly opposed. Ed Miliband accused the prime minister of a historic error. He said: “He has not just walked away from the talks – he has walked away from his own commitments to the press victims.” An angry Nick Clegg said Cameron was wrong to turn his back on cross-party talks at this critical point. “It’s not an issue which I believe should be the subject of party political point-scoring,” the deputy prime minister said. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/mar/14/cameron-gambles-press-regulation